(Everything here is 100% me, no AI.)
me in 10 seconds
Xenophile, programmer, netizen, and conversationalist.
(1984-1997): Musician. Berklee grad, played 1000+ shows, guitarist for Ryuichi Sakamoto, wrote and recorded 120+ songs.
(1998-2008): Entrepreneur. Started and sold CD Baby. Paid $83M to musicians.
(2009-2025): Author, speaker. 5 books, 550+ articles, some TED talks, guest on 250+ podcasts.
(2026+): ?
Me in 10 minutes?
See my /about page.
What am I doing now?
See my /now page.
Contact me
I like meeting people, and I reply to every email, so say hello.
newest articles
- Bangalore India hospital flow
- Building without predicting
- Prepare your “no” and keep it handy
- My life was changed by four sentences in four books
- Geography is four-dimensional
… and more here.
my books
Useful Not True
Doubt everything. No beliefs are true. Adopt what works for you now.
How to Live
My masterpiece. Best thing I’ve ever made. My soul in a book.
Hell Yeah or No
Useful wisdom. Simple profound mental models to guide your decisions.
Your Music and People
Get your work to the world by being creative, considerate, resourceful, and connected.
Anything You Want
40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur. My tales of starting, building, and selling CD Baby.
See the foreign publishers of my translated books.
interviews
You can listen to over 250 interviews, where I’m the guest.
Each one has audio, sometimes video, and a full transcript.
projects
- Book Notes
- detailed notes from the last 430+ books I’ve read
- Now Now Now
- a collection of sites that have a “what I’m doing now” page
- Tech Independence
- step-by-step instructions to set up your own server and break dependency on the cloud
- Conversations in…
- when I travel, I meet with people who have emailed me
- Books that reference me
- excerpts from books that have written about me
- MusicThoughts
- inspiring quotes about music, translated into Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Русский, العربية, 日本語, and 中文
- Presentations
- my TED talks and other stage talks
tweets
- Explorer? Being lost makes you fully present? The mystery of distance. Desire cherished instead of satisfied. Similar thoughts in this book: sive.rs/book/GettingLost
- Interesting business book 'Alchemy' by Rory Sutherland about ideas that don't make sense in theory but work in practice: sive.rs/book/Alchemy
- Istanbul Tűrkiye - 12 days in 10 neighborhoods, meeting up with 30 local people for 60 hours of conversation: sive.rs/met/at-16
- To understand Türkiye and Turkish worldviews a bit, this book is a good quick start: sive.rs/book/TurkeyCS
- When walking a city, what do different experts notice that you don’t? Fun book on this: On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz. My notes: sive.rs/book/OnLooking
… and more here.
photos
You want more?!
Everything I do is here on this site.
syndicated
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